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Category: seasons

Last Day, First Day

Last Day, First Day

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Last day of school, first day of summer. The weight of the world would slip from my shoulders. Time stood still, and days were warm and without purpose. There would be cool shady mornings and long lighted evenings. There would be watermelon and iced tea and potato salad;  filmy cotton dresses and new Keds that I’d get dirty right away.

And later, when the children were young, there was their joy to witness, the shaving cream fights at the bus stop on the last day (see above), the creek wading and romps in the woods, the road trips to Kentucky and Indiana and Montana and Maine. Summer was a time to put the world aside. Now the world pushes its way into every season.

One daughter packs for Africa, another is about to be a senior in college, the youngest a senior in high school. Time didn’t stand still after all.

Eight or Later

Eight or Later

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I heard yesterday on the weather report that the sun will not set before eight p.m. from now until August 18. It’s a good way to celebrate May Day and the start of a new month, with the promise of light.

Hot autumn days with an unshakeable air of melancholy are proof that it’s not lack of warmth that makes me mourn the end of summer. It’s the early darkness.

Extra daylight means early mornings and late nights. It means tomatoes and zinnias and basil. It means after-dinner strolls,  evening swims and long suppers on the deck. And of course, it’s the perfect excuse for insomnia. Summer is often thought an indolent time, but when you consider the extra daylight it gives us, it’s better thought of as an active season, a heroic season.

Knowing we have three and a half months of late sunsets ahead of us gives me a sense of calm — even after solstice comes, we will still have light on our side.

A Photo of Phlox

A Photo of Phlox

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Waking from brief sleep, I make some tea and slowly come alive. We’ve moved from summer back to spring. The first birds are stirring. It’s the hour before dawn, when the day is just a hint on the horizon.

Soon I will drive in the gloaming past the shimmering azaleas, the fading dogwood. I will, in my haste, not have time to look, to really see, what I am passing.

But on an earlier day I have let the camera look for me. Here, on our normally sedate corner, a vivid crop of creeping phlox.

Blue and Gold

Blue and Gold

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A string of cool days and cold nights has put spring into slow-mo. I love it when this happens. It prolongs “nature’s first green,” which is gold, as Robert Frost said. Precious. Fleeting.

So, in advance of the weekend’s warming trend, I celebrate this first green, best as viewed against a blue, blue sky. And again, nature has cooperated, has given us low-humidity azures. So rather than looking down at the parched and powdery soil, I’ve looked up at the heavens. And the gold.

The Birth of a Fern

The Birth of a Fern

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It emerges not as a shoot but as a tendril. Furry and curved, something prehistoric, of the grave. One does not ooh and aah over the baby fern. One is curious, to be sure. And circumspect. A bit in awe. But not giddy or giggle-prone. Adorable the young fern is not.

But as it grows, it comes into its own. It unfurls, straightens out, becomes the plant it was meant to be. Lacey and delicate. At once contemporary and old-fashioned. Ferns give me faith.

Virginia Bluebells

Virginia Bluebells

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I know where to find them, walked right to them on Friday, crossed Soapstone, turned left onto a springy woods trail and there they were. Early, of course. But then everything is early this year.

Tall, nodding flowers, pink as buds and becoming a heavenly blue in maturity. A blue edging toward periwinkle. A color seen less often this time of year, so dominated are we by yellows, pinks and purples.

The Virginia bluebell thrives in woodland soil, rich, loamy, leaf-strewn. There are few of these wildflowers in our woods. Which makes seeing them each spring all the more essential. I make my way to their home as if visiting a national monument or a famous painting. It’s one of my rites of spring.

Photo: Bellewood Gardens.com

New Leaves

New Leaves

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For the last few days the oak leaves have been inching slowly heavenward. The nights have been cool, so they have stayed small and purposeful and brilliant. They are flowers but not flowering, leaves but not leaving.

At this point each one is separate, distinct, on its own skyward pilgrimage. They raise themselves up as if in prayer. They catch the evening light.

Promise

Promise

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March came in like a lamb and is going out like one, too. I raise a silent cheer for lambs, then, and for spring green, pileated woodpeckers (just saw a huge one on our wood pile), fresh mint (sprouting in our garden) and a backyard still in progress.

The double-barreled tree trunk by the fence, it can still be turned into a funky water feature. And the day lilies we transplanted, they may still bloom. Springtime has many charms, but chief among them is potential, the light and the growing season that lie ahead of us. Would that I could always feel the promise of each day.

The Grace of Good Company

The Grace of Good Company

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It’s springtime in Washington, which means we host friends we haven’t seen in years. They come from the city and the suburbs, from the Midwest and the West Coast. And they bring with them a whiff of the way things used to be, of the pre-suburban me. They remind me that there is a grace that flows from good company.

Last night there were 12 of us in our small kitchen, friends and kids of friends, eating and laughing and talking about everything from the Supreme Court health care debate to the plethora of Chicago microbreweries.

Roots and seedlings aren’t the only things being stirred to life this time of year.

Greening

Greening

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The rains fell and the winds blew and now there is a new palette in our woods. The brown of autumn and winter, of crushed leaves and dry twigs, has given way to green.

Not just one green but many. There is the iridescent hue of new leaves sprouting on the cottonwood tree. The dark sheen of skunk cabbage and may apple as it sprouts in the lowlands. The verdant tips of new hedge growth. We live not in monochrome but in kodachrome (and probably something much more up-to-date that doesn’t rhyme).

As the green grows, the brown recedes. We no longer pad upon a bed of leaves but a carpet of grass.